Milton in the Long Restoration

Edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro

Explores Milton's relationship to his contemporaries and early eighteenth-century heirs

Demonstrates that some of Milton's earliest readers were more perceptive than Romantic and twentieth-century interpreters

Milton in the Long Restoration

Edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro

Description

Milton criticism often treats the poet as if he were the last of the Renaissance poets or a visionary prophet who remained misunderstood until he was read by the Romantics. At the same time, literary histories of the period often invoke a "long eighteenth century" that reaches its climax with the French Revolution or the Reform Bill of 1832. What gets overlooked in such accounts is the rich story of Milton's relationship to his contemporaries and early eighteenth-century heirs. The essays in this collection demonstrate that some of Milton's earliest readers were more perceptive than Romantic and twentieth-century interpreters. The translations, editions, and commentaries produced by early eighteenth century men of letters emerge as the seedbed of modern criticism and the term "neoclassical" is itself unmasked as an inadequate characterization of the literary criticism and poetry of the period--a period that could brilliantly define a Miltonic sublime, even as it supported and described all the varieties of parody and domestication found in the mock epic and the novel. These essays, which are written by a team of leading Miltonists and scholars of the Restoration and eighteenth century, cover a range of topics--from Milton's early editors and translators to his first theatrical producers; from Miltonic similes in Pope's Iliad to Miltonic echoes in Austen's Pride and Prejudice; from marriage, to slavery, to republicanism, to the heresy of Arianism. What they share in common is a conviction that the early eighteenth century understood Milton and that the Long Restoration cannot be understood without him.

Milton in the Long Restoration

Edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro

Table of Contents

List of Figures Note on the Text and List of Abbreviations List of Contributors Introduction. Why Milton in the Long Restoration, Blair HoxbyI. RECEPTION AND INTERPRETATION1. Milton's Spots: Addison on Paradise Lost, Denise Gigante2. Critical Mass: Contextualizing Bentley's Paradise Lost, David A. Harper3. 'A Fine Paradisaical Notion': Materialism and Readings of Paradise Lost in the 'Long Restoration', N. K. Sugimura4. 'In the Dun Air Sublime': Milton, the Richardsons, and the Invention of Aesthetic Categories, Blair HoxbyII. THE DRAMATIC AND THEATRICAL MILTON5. Milton's Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Samson Agonistes, Ann Baynes Coiro6. John Dennis, John Locke, and the Sublimation of Revolt: Samson Agonistes after the Glorious Revolution, Catherine Gimelli Martin7. 'To Secure Our Freedom': How A Mask Presented at Ludlow-Castle Became Milton's Comus, Blaine Greteman8. Milton Modulated for Handel's Music, Ruth SmithIII. LINEAL DESCENTS AND CLANS9. John Dryden Meets, Rhymes, and Says Farewell to John Milton: A Restoration Drama in Four Scenes, Steven N. Zwicker10. 'I Still Deny'd, Much Pleas'd to Hear You Sue': Milton's Eve, Ovid, and the Restoration Coquette, Laura L. Knoppers11. Angel Bodies to Whig Souls: Blank Verse after Blenheim, Dustin D. Stewart12. Yet Once More: Milton's Lyric Descendants, Christopher R. Miller13. Milton's Pope, Sophie GeeIV. CONDITIONS OF LIBERTY14. The Circling Hours: Revolution in Paradise Regained, GregoryChaplin15. 'In Power of Others, Never in My Own': The Meaning of Slavery in Samson Agonistes, Martin Dzelzainis16. Milton and the Restoration Literae, Nicholas von Maltzahn17. Milton, Newton, and the Implications of Arianism, Stephen M. Fallon18. Friday as Fit Help, Mary NyquistV. WIDER WORLDS19. Early Modern Marriage in a Secular Age: Beyond the Sexual Contract, Sharon Achinstein20. Haak's Milton, Nigel Smith21. Miltonic Texts and European Politics, 1674-1682, Jason Peacey22. Purging the Visual Nerve: Exploration, 'Revelation', and Cosmography in Milton Commentaries and Criticism of the Long Restoration, Anne-Julia Zwierlein23. Some Thoughts on Periodization: John Milton to Adam Smith and Beyond, Steven PincusVI. EPIC, MOCK EPIC, AND THE NOVEL24. Milton, the Long Restoration, and Pope's Iliad, John Leonard25. Paradise Lost and English Mock Heroic, Anthony Welch26. Milton and the People, Joanna Picciotto27. Paradise Lost in the Long Restoration, 1660-1742: The Parody of Form, Michael McKeon28. Raphael's Condescension: Paradise Lost, Jane Austen, and the Secular Displacement of Grace, Paul StevensVII. MILTON'S LIVES29. 'His Ears Now Were Eyes to Him': The Lives of Milton in the Long Restoration, Jayne LewisBibliography Index

Milton in the Long Restoration

Edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro

Author Information

Blair Hoxby is an Associate Professor of English at Stanford University. After graduating with an A. B. from Harvard University, he studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He then earned his Ph.D. from Yale University. Before coming to Stanford, he was an Associate Professor of English at Yale and an Associate Professor of History and Literature at Harvard. He is the author of Mammon's Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton; What Was Tragedy? Theory and the Early Modern Canon; and numerous articles on Milton, literary and cultural responses to nascent capitalism, early modern theater, and theories of tragedy.

Ann Baynes Coiro is Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of a number of essays on a wide variety of topics, including Herrick, Jonson, Amelia Lanyer, the social connections of manuscript and print circulation, Stuart court culture, Cavalier poetry and the English revolution, and Restoration theatricality. In particular, she has published many essays on Milton's poetry. She will be the President of the Milton Society of America, 2016-17. Her first book was titled Robert Herrick's Hesperides and the Epigram Book Tradition. She has co-edited the recent Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton.

Contributors:

Sharon Achinstein, Johns Hopkins UniversityGregory Chaplin, Bridgewater State University in MassachusettsAnn Baynes Coiro, Rutgers UniversityMartin Dzelzainis, University of LeicesterStephen Fallon, University of Notre DameSophie Gee, Princeton UniversityDenise Gigante, Stanford UniversityBlaine Greteman, University of IowaDavid A. Harper, United States Military Academy at West Point Blair Hoxby, Stanford UniversityLaura L. Knoppers, University of Notre DameJohn Leonard, Western University in CanadaJayne Lewis, University of California, IrvineMichael McKeon, Rutgers UniversityNicholas von Maltzahn, University of OttawaCatherine Gimelli Martin, University of Memphis Christopher R. Miller, City University of New YorkMary Nyquist, University of TorontoJason Peacey, University College LondonJoanna Picciotto, UC BerkeleySteven Pincus, Yale UniversityNigel Smith, Princeton UniversityRuth Smith, freelance scholarPaul Stevens, University of TorontoDustin D. Stewart, Columbia UniversityN. K. Sugimura, Georgetown UniversityAnthony Welch, University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleAnne-Julia Zwierlein, University of Regensburg

Milton in the Long Restoration

Edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro

Reviews and Awards

"it is hard to think of a recent book with "Restoration" in the title that can compare to Milton in the Long Restoration either in terms of substance or as an event: certainly not a collection of essays, nor is there a similarly magisterial Handbook of Restoration Literature to which we might point ... the individual brilliance of the essays is not in doubt -- no mean feat for a book this capacious and wide-ranging ... I hope I have given some sense of its scope and of its unflinching quality." --Matthew C. Augustine, Huntington Library Quarterly

"Milton in the Long Restoration, edited by Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro, is a thoughtful collection of unexpected approaches to the great poet of the seventeenth century."--George E. Haggerty, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900